Meaning & readings
hang, suspend, depend, arrive at, tax, pour
Origin
The character 掛 combines a hand radical on the left, which shows this is an action performed with the hands, with the component 卦 on the right, which serves as a sound hint for pronunciation rather than contributing to the meaning. The hand element suggests the physical act of hanging or suspending something, which is the core meaning. Over time, the word extended to related senses like depending on something or a tax being imposed, all derived from this basic image of hanging or supporting something by hand.
AI-generated (claude-haiku-4-5), not yet reviewed. Formation type (automated guess): Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint).
Components
- 扌
- 卦
A sound hint component points at the character’s pronunciation, not its meaning — don’t read a meaning into it.
Common words
- 掛け かけ credit
- 掛かる かかる to take (a resource, e.g. time or money)
- 掛ける かける to hang up (e.g. a coat, a picture on the wall); to let hang
- 腰掛け こしかけ seat; bench
- 掛け金 かけきん installment; instalment
- 掛け声 かけごえ shout (of encouragement, etc.); yell (used to time or encourage activity, e.g. "Heave ho!")
- 掛け算 かけざん multiplication
- 掛け軸 かけじく hanging scroll
Reference
- Strokes
- 11
- Kangxi radical
- 64
- Grade
- Jōyō (secondary school)
- Frequency rank
- #1027 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 1
- Unicode
- U+0639B